Women recall pioneer families at luncheon

KISSIN' COUSINS REUNITE: Several women, who are related descendants of Northeast pioneer families, recently met for lunch in Fort Worth.

There were "about four or five families, including the Arwines, Souders, Andersons and Robersons, that came by covered wagon to the Hurst area in 1865 from central Indiana," said Hattie Belle Cribbs, 83, great-granddaughter of pioneer Daniel Arwine.

"It was all farmland, and my great-grandpa Arwine had a farm of hundreds of acres," Hattie Cribbs said. "His property was near Brown Trail and Pipeline Road, east to about Central [Drive] and, I guess, south to the railroad. The acreage where Arwine Cemetery is in Hurst was given by my great-grandpa. Enough land was given for the purpose of a cemetery, a school and a church. I can remember playing in the deserted Arwine School and the community church building.

"We have all lived within the Fort Worth/Dallas area all our lives, even to the grandchildren," Cribbs said. "We get together at Easter and Christmas to learn more about the whole family. We'd written a history book, and we discussed this at the luncheon and exchanged notes on the other descendants."

Those attending the luncheon included Dorothy Kinnaird-Dodd, Mary Ruth Ellis and Cribbs, all of North Richland Hills; Ellis' sister, Georgia Duncan of Richland Hills; Kinnaird-Dodd's sister, Mary Lutes Kinman of Haltom City; and Fort Worth residents, Elouise Wright and her sister, Frances Kauffman, also Gladys Lutes Jones, and Ruby Lee Hackney Piester.

"The first U.S. marshal in this area was Great-Grandpa Daniel Arwine," Cribbs said. "His log house was where the Hurst Christian Church is now at Brown Trail and Pipeline Road. He would bring prisoners to his home and keep them overnight. If the weather permitted, he chained them to a tree in his front yard. If the weather was bad, he would put them in the barn and keep them overnight and then take them to Fort Worth Jail. When my grandmother was a child, she helped drive nails in the wood to help build this jail."

Cribbs' grandfather, Jim Anderson, was in the original group from Indiana, and later married Arwine's daughter, Hattie, who was about eight years younger than Anderson and a child at the time of the migration to Texas.

Jim and Hattie Anderson had 10 children -- eight girls and two boys. The mothers of Cribbs and Piester, also Ellis and her sister, Duncan, were sisters, making them first cousins. They are second cousins to the others attending the luncheon. They are descendants of Jim Anderson's sister, Lizzie Anderson Lutes.

Jim Anderson brought gold bars from Indiana to pay for about 2,000 acres of land in Tarrant County, much of it in the Hurst area, but some in Watauga, Euless and the Riverside area of northeast Fort Worth.

He and his wife later divided the land twice between their 10 children, Cribbs said. The first division they gave 50 acres to the ones who had a house on the land, and 75 to the others.

"My mother, Bertha Anderson Reeves, married Linnie Pryor Reeves in 1914, and I was born May 8, 1915, on the first 50 acres that Grandpa gave Mother," Cribbs said. "It was near Mosier Valley, in southeast Hurst.

"The second division I was old enough to remember. We all came to Grandma's and Grandpa's house in Hurst where the land was given for a courthouse on Bedford-Euless Road, the first sub-courthouse of the Northeast Tarrant County area.

"Grandpa's lawyer came out, and the children drew for the deeds for the property. This time, Mother got 50 acres over on Pipeline Road where all the houses have been torn down [to enlarge North East Mall]. That was my acreage, because Mother gave it to me. We ran cattle on that property for a long while. I sold it to Browning Construction Co."

Jim Anderson's sister, Lizzie Anderson Lutes, and her husband, John Lutes, who were grandparents of the other first cousins at the luncheon, "settled mostly in the Riverside area," Kinnaird-Dodd said. "They had five children, including a set of twins. They had about six rent houses near Sylvania Avenue." Kinman's and Kinnaird-Dodd's father, Riley Lutes, was a son of Lizzie Anderson and John Lutes, as was George Lutes, Jones' father. Lizzie and John Lutes' daughter, Allie Lutes Vandiver, was the mother of Kauffman and Wright.

"We've been here a long time," Cribbs said. "Many of us were in education. I was one of the first sixth-grade teachers at Richland Elementary. I started teaching in 1936 at Harrison School, just north of Arlington and retired in 1977. I taught at Birdville, Hurst, Arlington and all around. I quit three times but would go back to teaching, a total about 30 years."